Author(s)

M.J. Molina & J.V. Llinares

Abstract

In Mediterranean areas, where fire is a recurrent process, soil water availability may be a major cause for the spatial and temporal pattern of plant recovery after fires, since water is found to limit plant growth in semiarid environments. In the Spanish region of Valencia we studied the water dynamics of a typical forest soil subjected to experimental fires of contrasted levels of fire intensity, and also that of a control (unburned) soil. This was done in the field by TDK examination of their water content variations at the 0-10 mm surface soil and at the 10-100 mm subsoil, in the plant spaces and the plant interspace patches, after the first intense rainfall followi

Keywords